My Story

Rebecca and her husband, Adam, wearing 18th century dress at a costumed picnic
at Mottisfont (National Trust), Hampshire, 2022. Photo: Rachel Dittrich.

I launched my business as a freelance researcher and maker of historical dress in 2017.  

I don't remember learning to sew. I do remember watching and helping my mother when I was a child. Everything nice that my younger sisters and I wore -- especially for special occasions -- was made by my mother. By the time I was in my teens, I was making a lot of everyday clothes for myself. At age 14, I signed up for a sewing class -- not because I needed tuition but because I needed access to a sewing machine without competing for my mother's at home! By the time I was 16, my tailoring skills were advanced enough that I was proud to wear my ‘me-made’ clothing in public, even in high school in the 1980s.

I was a "bookish" adolescent, with my nose (and head) usually buried in fictionalised accounts of times gone by. I cut my teeth on Georgette Heyer when I was 9. Biographies of women throughout the 17th-19th centuries were also my bread and butter.

After graduating from high school in the USA, sewing fell by the wayside as my salary mostly went to financing my visits to Europe and I never seemed to have a space of my own large enough for an activity like sewing. Yet the fascination with history, historical clothing and women’s lived experiences never left me.

Fast forward to late 2017 when I realised I was becoming disenchanted with my London legal career, indeed with the day-to-day reality of working for others rather than myself. Luckily, I was in a position that I could ‘pack it all in’, reacquaint myself with the joys, challenges and satisfactions of sewing. I took the plunge into making historical garments a full-time occupation just before Christmas 2017.

Four books by Georgette Heyer. The first book has a cover illustration of a woman in a white dress talking to a man in a red coat at the bottom of a staircase. The second book's cover features a painting of three women and a man in historical attire, with a background of potted plants. The third book shows a cover illustration of a man in formal historical attire talking to two women in a room with curtains. The fourth book's cover has a close-up portrait of a woman with short dark hair, titled "The Private World of Georgette Heyer."

I have had the privilege of studying historical dress with some of the most knowledgeable historians and skilled artisans in the world, people who have devoted much of their lives to studying the 18th century, its social structures, economic and political contexts, and its material culture, addressing the whats, whos, wheres, whens, hows and whys of clothing production, reproduction and recycling… people who have been generous about sharing their knowledge and skills with others, inspiring me to follow their example.

Studying a postgraduate degree in Dress and Textile Histories at the University of Glasgow was one of the best experiences of my life. Together with studies at the Textile Resource Centre in Leiden, Netherlands, my approaches to my work, my methodologies and the impacts I seek were transformed.

My main passion is the all-too-brief period of time from approximately 1675 to 1825 when women’s fitted garments were made by skilled tradeswomen - what I call the Golden Age of the Mantua Maker. I am also intrigued by the fashions of the Stuart court, the English Civil War and Restoration period, and the Dutch ‘Golden Age’.

Since 2017, I have

  • delivered three public history programs in Scottish museums and heritage sites, making 18th-century gowns in front of visitors to demonstrate how 18th century mantua makers worked;

  • undertaken research and provided interpretative tools for an online exhibition of Scottish historical dress;

  • given talks about aspects of 18th century fashions and garment making for museums, heritage sites and costume societies in England, Scotland and the eastern USA;

  • designed and delivered an intensive two-week work experience placement in 18th century garment making skills for one of the UK’s leading undergraduate degree programs for costume production;

  • and along the way stitched many garments for re-enactors and living historians across the UK and USA.

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I am a current member of The Costume Society (UK), Costume Society of Scotland, Nederlandse Kostuumvereniging (Dutch Costume Society), Association of Dress Historians, The Costume Society of America, Dress and Textile Specialists (DATS), The Medieval Dress and Textile Society (MEDATS), Women’s History Network, Women’s History Scotland, Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837, Royal Historical Society, British Society For Eighteenth Century Studies, Economic and Social History Society of Scotland, British Association for Local History, Scottish Local History Forum, Scottish Society for Northern Studies, Society of Highland & Island Historical Research (Scotland), Interpret Europe, and the Association for Heritage Interpretation (UK).

I was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in April 2025.